Hopefully, all will be well.

You guys are so great, I am overwhelmed with your techie knowledge.

Hope all stays well for you. Been watching this thread just incase I need this kind of help one day.

Thank you and I'll say we have some pretty smart technical guys here and I think we all appreciate them as much as I do. I am glad I posted this for other people to know what to do also, if it happens to them

My fingers are crossed.

I hope things continue to work. Have you turned your computer off, then on, to test power cycling yet?

Since you know (from switching monitors but not cables) that the original blue VGA cable is good, you should put it in one of your junk places. You might also want to put a label on the back of the monitor saying that the VGA input is faulty (and perhaps put a piece of electrical tape over the connector).

I did turn my pc off and turned it back on again, but the test is usually when it is off longer, like over night. If it is still good in the morning when I boot up, I I will feel more positive.
I will keep the thread going until I know for sure. Thanks Saul for the help. I already labeled my old cable and put in back in a package.

Good that you found the DVI cable Molly. You may or may not have noticed, but your image quality will be better especially if you use a resolution other then the monitor's default high rez setting.

Lyle, would I also notice a difference in the forum or in my hotmail. I might be imagining it but everything including the text seems to look more crisp and clear.

I know you're asking Lyle, but...
VGA connectors transmit analog signals. The digital video signal received from the source is converted to analog to be transmitted via the cable. If the display device is an old CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitor, it accepts an analog signal. However, most display devices are now digital; so they convert the VGA connector's analog signal back to digital. This conversion from digital to analog and back results in a degradation of video quality for VGA connectors.

DVI is newer and offers better, sharper display compared to VGA, especially at higher resolutions. Like Lyle has explained.

Yup; listen to Wallace. lol

We live in a digital age, so might as well go all digital (VGA is not, but usually, at hirez native, you won't see too much difference. The crux is most people don't use the hirez native for the monitor). DVI is good for all resolutions. Again, HDMI, I believe, is even better, but I have no way to compare that since my monitor's too old.

I have all three connection on my monitor.
I'm currently using the HDMI connection. I was using VGA for some time, but switched when I got my new machine and installed a better graphics card.

One big difference between HDMI and DVI is that HDMI also carries digital audio signals. DVI also doesn't support HDCP encryption, which is there to prevent you from copying HD sources (Blu-ray). This can be good or bad, depending on how you look at things.

Yeah, I hook up an external audio source to be able to use my earphones with the sound from my PC, when connected using the HDMI cable.
I get no sound from the audio jack on my PC when using the HDMI cable, I guess my video-card has disabled the audio-out jack on the front of my PC.

Normally, you should be able to selected the audio output device on a "per app" basis, at least in Linux you can. I assume this is also the case in Windows. For example, in VLC, I can specify the audio output device.

Yeah, I'm going to look into this.
I should be able to set the output to both HDMI and the earphone jack, I think.

I'm only able to use one device at a time, either I use the HDMI or earphone jack. I can't enable both at the same time.

Glad you got it fixed, Molly. WTG!

I guess I'm unclear as to your hardware setup. Do you currently have the sound going through a HDMI A/V receiver or just coming though the speakers in your monitor? If the latter, do you have headphone jacks on the monitor?

Where are you connecting the headphones?

My headphones are connected to a speaker system that's plugged into the monitor's headphone jack. The speaker system has it's own volume control module with a headphone jack on it.
This may sound strange, but it works and there's no need to disable anything. Except when I need to use my headset with a microphone. I'm also able to use the subwoofer that's part of the speaker system, for killer bass.

I used to have my pc hooked up to a surround sound dolby digital and when I turned that up it almost blasted me off the chair, it was and is very powerful. I decided I didn't need all that noise so I hooked it up to one of the TV's and got a real good set of stereo head phones for my pc and they work great.

Back to the topic, I booted up this morning and everything in the monitor dept. is working great and I will cross my fingers that it will stay that way. Thanks to all the help I received from everyone.